


Another Truth

by Pineapple_Daddy



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, other characters are mentioned but don't actually show up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29826807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pineapple_Daddy/pseuds/Pineapple_Daddy
Summary: It was the day of her recital where she'd finally get to perform a duet with her beloved younger brother. Mari had been looking forward to this day for a long time, looking forward to living out her dream. But a single argument brought that dream crashing down and all she could do was helplessly watch.
Relationships: Basil & Mari (OMORI), Mari & Sunny (OMORI)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 83





	Another Truth

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm sure you could guess, but this is a roleswap between Mari and Sunny. However, I want to make it VERY CLEAR that i don't want this to be associated with the Omari!AU. that is a different project entirely albeit one with a similar concept. I have my own takes and ideas on this concept that I would rather not be conflated with Omari. I may or may not be releasing a companion fic for this that better explores the current ideas I have, but it depends on a number of factors I won't mention here.
> 
> Anyways, with that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy~!

Mari was in her shared bedroom, dutifully preparing herself for the day’s big recital when she heard the noise. Like crashing thunder, it came without warning and shattered the peaceful silence that she had grown comfortable with. One second, she’s organizing her sheet music and phantom pressing the keys of her piano and the next she’s flying out of her desk chair to see what the commotion was. The only thing she had on her mind was whether or not her precious little brother was ok.

The noise was loud and sounded like wood breaking and splinterring, with an accompanying screech of out-of-tune strings snapping. It was almost as if she heard the sound of a string instrument being shattered. Mari couldn’t help but be worried by it. Did her brother trip and fall on his violin? Or did he merely drop it by mistake? Either way, Mari threw open her bedroom door to see her brother standing stalk still by the stairs, staring intently down at something at the bottom of the steps. He didn’t look hurt, thankfully, but one could never be too sure.

“Sunny! Are you ok? What happened?,” Mari asked. However, her questions went unanswered as Sunny failed to so much as turn to look at her.

Slowly but surely, Mari’s anxious fear transformed from one spurred on by panic to instead being clutched by suspension. Her brother, though normally very stoic and calm, would never refuse to acknowledge her. He loved her too much to just ignore her without a reason. But then the question remained, what was the reason for his current behavior?

Inching closer, Mari continued, “Sunny? What is it?”

But the answer was presented before her very eyes by the time she joined Sunny’s side. Following his gaze, she saw, lying in a shattered heap at the bottom of the stairs, a broken violin that had once been very nice and very beautiful. For whatever reason, Sunny’s violin now sat broken and irreparable.

“Oh, Sunny… your violin…,” Mari said as she brought up a hand to her face. It was a sad sight to see, and just before their duet at the recital, too. But then Mari noted that, even if dropped down an entire flight of stairs, a violin as sturdy and high-quality as that wouldn’t simply break to such an intense degree. It would have to deliberately be destroyed for it to be so splintered and crumpled. “Did you… Did you do this on purpose?”

But Sunny still would not look at her and still, he would not answer her. She couldn’t even see his expression past the bangs that hung like a jet black curtain on his lowered head.

“I won’t ask again: Did you break your violin on purpose?”

Finally, there was a grumbled, if unintelligible, response.

“What was that? You’ll need to speak up, I can’t hear you.”

There was a short, sharp inhale and then, “I did break it, ok?! I threw that stupid thing down the staircase as hard as I could and broke it!” Sunny had never shouted like that before, his usual calm and neutral demeanor disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Mari was only caught off guard for a moment. Within her, her worry began melting away with the heat of a growing anger. “The violin is not stupid. That was an expensive gift that all your friends and I worked very hard to get you!,” she scolded. “Why would you just break it? And on the day of the recital, no less!”

“You shouldn’t have gotten me that thing in the first place,” Sunny said. “I can't play it, I'd just ruin the recital with it.”

“What are you talking about?” Mari had seen Sunny practice his violin, had practiced with him many, many times. She knew first hand that he was skilled with the string instrument and that he worked incredibly hard to get where he is now. Yet, here he was throwing it all away just as all that practice accumulated to something meaningful. “That doesn’t make it okay to destroy something so valuable! I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working to perfect our duet, you would’ve been just fine. But... you’re just gonna- gonna give up? Before you even try to perform?”

Mari had never exactly said it in words, but one of her greatest dreams was to be able to perform music alongside her dear little brother. When she learned that he was interested in picking up the violin again, she couldn’t have been happier. That’s why she got their shared friend group to band together and save up enough money to buy Sunny a nice violin last Christmas. Like a vase being knocked off a table, that dream shattered the moment the violin hit the ground.

Mari didn’t understand why Sunny would do such a thing so close to that dream being realized. She couldn’t understand what he was thinking.

“But I’m not like you Mari! I can’t perfect the song the way you do!,” Sunny argued. “I’ll mess up on stage, in front of everyone, and completely ruin the whole performance!”

“That isn’t true and you know it! You can’t say you’ve failed before you even try!,” Mari fired back. “But breaking your violin… and trying to run away from facing a challenge… that’s what will truly ruin the recital. You can’t keep acting like a child like this forever, Sunny! Someday you’ll have to grow up and deal with these things whether you like it or not!” Perhaps it was wrong of her to say, she wouldn’t know until after the fact, but she thoughtlessly added with a sigh, “I can’t believe you’d do something so- so stupid. I’m disappointed in you.”

Clenching his fists, Sunny shouted back, “Shut up! You wouldn’t understand! You always told me to keep working, to keep practicing if I wanted to perform with you, but I just can’t do it! Not the way you want me to. I’m trying my best, I swear I am, yet it just isn’t enough. There wasn’t any point in trying to play the violin again if all it causes is pain!

“S-Sunny, that’s not-!”

All too suddenly, the building tension finally boiled over the breaking point as Sunny pushed Mari away from him and made a dash for the stairs. Mari, in turn fell onto her back, hitting the wood floor with a dull thud and a surprised grunt. However, it didn’t take her long to regain her bearings and realize what her little brother was trying to do. He was trying to run away, to escape yet another problem. Mari couldn’t let him do that. She was his older sister, she protected him from harm, but it was also her responsibility to encourage him to face his fears and take risks.

In what little time she had to react, Mari reached out to grab Sunny. From her place on the floor, she had to lunge forward to reach him and, even then, the only thing she could grab in time was his ankle. However, it was too late. His momentum was too strong and her grip too weak and he was already descending the first few steps of the staircase. Though her hand slipped away, the tug she gave him was enough to break Sunny’s balance.

Mari watched helplessly as Sunny failed to catch himself, the way he turned halfway to face her with fear in his eyes permanently etched into her mind. Down, down he went tumbling, hitting every step along the way until he hit the bottom, landing right on top of the shattered violin.

Mari stared down, her shock leaving her frozen in place with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. It all happened so fast- too fast- for her to process. Her brother was just right there, angry and frustrated, but safe and unharmed. Then the very next moment he’s lying on his side at the bottom of the stairwell, beat up and with a pool of blood growing around him. He wasn’t moving, not even with the steady rise and fall of breathing, and he didn’t make a sound either.

“S-Sunny…?,” Mari weakly called, but there was no response. Hesitantly and carefully, she rose from the floor and descended the stairs. At the bottom, she fell to her knees next to Sunny and ever so gently pulled him close to lay on her lap. He almost looked as though he were simply sleeping peacefully with his eyes closed, but the blood gushing from his side where the violin had dug into his side said otherwise. Bits of wood stuck out from where they pierced his clothing to lodge in his skin and chunks of Sunny’s hair were caught in the frayed and snapped strings of the violin and its bow. Luckily, his clothes prevented the strings from further damaging the area with the most profuse bleeding, but his arm and the sides of his face were not free from the scratches they caused. Most importantly though, he didn’t appear to be breathing much if at all.

He was just unconscious, Mari told herself. He must have hit his head hard enough to be knocked unconscious during the fall.

“Sunny… Little brother, please wake up,” Mari begged as she started to untangle the violin strings from her brother’s hair. She could feel the tears beginning to well up in her eyes, blurring her vision and making it harder to see what she was doing.

Her brother had to be ok, she had to make sure he was ok. He was only hurt, but she could make it better again. After all, Mari had always been there to make things better for Sunny.

“...He’s gonna be ok, right?”

Hearing a new voice, Mari whipped her head up to see Basil standing and watching the scene play out from the doorway to the living room. When he had arrived, she didn’t know. She only vaguely recalled that he had plans to come over today so he could cheer on Sunny for the recital. How unfortunate that he happened to arrive in the middle of a developing tragedy.

“He’s just hurt, right?,” Basil continued. “This is just an accident and he’ll recover?”

“Basil…? Y-Yes, of course Sunny will be fine,” Mari assured him. In part, she was also trying to reassure herself just as much if not moreso. Trying to hold herself together, she continued, “Basil, can you do something for me? Can you please go call the ambulance? Sunny is hurt really bad, so he’ll need to be taken to the hospital. Think you can handle that?”

“O-Of course! Right away!,” Basil stuttered before he ran back into the living room.

Not daring to take the pieces of the violin out without something to staunch the blood, Mari carefully stood and lifted Sunny in her arms and followed Basil. While Basil grabbed the landline phone and dialed 9-1-1, Mari placed Sunny to lie down on the couch. She didn’t care that the blood would permanently stain the fabric.

Leaving towards the kitchen and letting Basil handle the 9-1-1 operator, Mari quickly started rummaging through the cabinets. She knew that her parents kept a first-aid kit somewhere underneath the sink. Pushing back a couple cleaning spray bottles and an unopened pack of sponges, she pulled out what she was looking for and returned to the living room. Basil, apparently, was still on the phone and was trying very hard to not completely break down, but Mari paid him little attention, too focussed on her current task.

All she could do was make use of whatever she could to make sure that Sunny would be ok. Cotton swabs, gauze, antibiotics, antiseptic wipes, whatever Mari thought would be helpful, she used as she removed Sunny’s shirt and began taking out the violin shards. The blood that gushed forth when she removed the sound board lodged deep in his side in particular nearly made her vomit as she tried her best to take care of it. But no matter what she did, it would not change the fact that he was losing far too much blood in the process and it would not change that fact that he was still not breathing. The best she could do by the end was leave Sunny cleaned up with copious amounts of gauze covering his wounds and a pile of bloodied medical supplies and violin parts sitting on the floor nearby.

She did all she could, but it still didn’t feel like enough. Staring at Sunny, unmoving and unresponsive, she felt hollow and numb to the world around her. She had patched up her brother before whenever he got hurt, but this time was different. He had never been hurt so badly before and Mari was only now noticing just how small and frail he looked. He was never the hardiest person and the current circumstances only served to highlight that fact.

“Please…,” Mari whispered. “Please be ok.”

“Mari…? The paramedics said they’ll be here in a few minutes,” Basil said as he joined the older girl’s side.

“Huh? Oh… thank you, Basil”

There was a tense silence shared between the two as they watched Sunny lay lifeless on the couch.

That silence ended when Mari began to quietly sob. “This is all my fault,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Wh-What?! No, you would never do something like this on purpose, Mari!,” Basil argued. “He just tripped by accident is all! It- It happens sometimes…”

“But if I hadn’t tried to grab him, he wouldn’t have lost his balance…! I just- I- I didn’t mean to hurt him, but now he might-”

“He-He’ll be fine! Ok, Mari?,” Basil reassured her, though he himself sounded like he was on the verge of sobbing, too. “You said so yourself. Y-You’re Sunny’s older sister, so you would know best!”

That was right. She was Sunny’s older sister, she protected him from harm, but it was also her responsibility to encourage him to face his fears and take risks. Mari had always been there to make things better and she always would be.

Neither Mari nor Basil wanted to acknowledge the truth: Sunny was gone and he wasn’t coming back.

~~~

That night, Mari could hear the sound of her mother sobbing endlessly into the sorrowful silence that consumed their once happy home.

Everything that happened after the paramedics arrived was a blur for Mari as she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the last time she saw Sunny alive. He looked so afraid- terrified- as he lost his balance and crashed down the entire flight of stairs. That look was one she wouldn’t soon forget, not now, not ever.

Still, Mari was at least aware enough to understand when her parents had been called after she was taken away in the ambulance alongside her brother. Her mother and father were, understandably, confused and concerned about what was going on. When they found their daughter sitting silently in the hospital’s waiting room, they didn’t try to comfort her or give her a reassuring hug. Instead they bombarded her with questions about what was going on, about why they received a call that their son was now lying in a hospital bed.

But Mari would not answer them. Gripping her knees with all her strength, the only thing she could bring herself to say was, “I just wanted to encourage him… why?”

Basil arrived not long after, finally catching up after having not been permitted to ride in the ambulance as well. When questioned by Mari’s parents about what he knew, he insisted that the incident was a complete accident. He insisted that Sunny was just walking down the stairs when he slipped and fell, landing on his violin in the process. He mentioned nothing of Mari’s involvement and Mari couldn’t bring herself to say the truth that he left out.

She couldn’t bring herself to admit out loud that she was at fault for Sunny dying.

When a doctor finally came to officially announce Sunny’s death, Mari did not cry. She had already cried out all her tears by then. And, deep down, no matter how much she tried to deny it, she knew the moment she saw Sunny lay motionless on top of his violin that he was well and truly gone. He would never come back to her and it was all her fault.

Mari had never seen her parents cry so much before in her life. Even long after Basil had headed home and Mari’s own family left the hospital, her mother still sobbed and her father still silently shed tears. The sound was muffled by the kitchen door that separated them from the rest of the house, but that mattered little. The house was silent and somber, the constant ticking of the hallway’s grandfather clock pounding like a drum in the quiet.

As for Mari herself, she was left to soulessly and mechanically clean up the scene of her crime. At the bottom of the staircase, she mopped up the dark and long dried vague outline of a violin made in blood, Sunny’s blood. Picking up the remaining remnants of the broken violin to move it out of the way, she noticed there were a few papers lying underneath. They were slightly crumpled and the edges were bloodied, but they were still legible. Picking them up too, Mari noticed they were the sheet music to her’s and Sunny’s duet. Specifically, they were the sheet music for Sunny’s part in the song.

She couldn’t bear to see them. But she couldn’t bear to throw them away either. They, along with the instrument meant to interpret them, still belonged to Sunny. They were mangled and forever stained with proof of Sunny’s death, but they were his and they were now one of the things she had left of him.

Looking at the destroyed instrument and its equally sad looking sheet music companion together, the fact that Mari's dream of performing with her brother would never come true finally sank in. Their first recital came crashing down before it ever began and there would never be another one.

The objects were a physical manifestation of her guilt and her pain, but Mari couldn’t give them up.

Without thinking, she walked towards the hallway closet and entered. Inside was an empty toy box that hadn’t been used for some time now. Placing the broken violin and the soiled sheet music inside, she took the key from its place on one of the nearby storage bins and locked the chest. Leaving the room, she thought to herself, it is not there. There is nothing there but more walls. Maybe one day she could face the truth, but today was not that day. For now, this was the best she could do to satisfy the side of her that wanted to toss the horrifying objects out and that side that wanted to keep them as a reminder to never forget what she had done.

When she was finished cleaning, she still refused to climb the stairs to her room. The stairs, the view of them from her bedroom doorway, she would never be able to look at them without reliving the moment she failed as an older sister and caused her brother’s death. Instead, she opted to spend the night in the treehouse in her backyard.

Various toys and knick knacks littered the treehouse from all the times she and her friends hung out together. But the only thing that stood out to her as she wistfully looked around was a lone picture taped to the wall. She didn’t remember it being there the last time she was here. Walking over to it, she took it off the wall and noted that it was a picture from Basil’s photo album. Specifically, it was the picture from when they finally finished the treehouse and everyone got to play in it for the first time. Everyone looked so happy. Well, everyone but Sunny, but he never liked to smile for pictures anyways. It made Mari laugh remembering the fun they all had, but it made her sad, too.

Once Hero, Kel, and Aubrey find out about Sunny, who knows whether or not things will stay the same. If she told them what had truly happened, that she was responsible for the accident, would they forgive her? Despite the tears that started to well-up once more, Mari’s eyes caught on a note left on the countertop just below where the photo had been taped to the wall. The note simply read:

I want you to have this. ~Basil

Basil must have left it for her before he left their house earlier. Mari couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking and going through having been the only witness to the murder of his best friend at the mere age of twelve. Yet he still thought to leave behind one of his precious photos for her when he had the chance. He was much too kindhearted for his own good and she hoped with all her heart that Basil wouldn’t beat himself too much over what happened.

Mari didn’t have the same hope for herself, however. In her mind, she could never atone for what she’s done.

When she could no longer evade sleep in the treehouse that night, she dreamed of an empty white void with a lone lightbulb hanging from nothing that glowed with a faint black light.

Welcome to White Space.  
You have never been here before.  
From today onward, that changes.


End file.
